Revision of the Agrarian Programme of the Workers’ Party

III

Comrade Maslov’s Principal Mistake

Here we must deal with another argument, which follows from the preceding one
but requires more detailed examination. We have just said that we can be
quite sure Maslov’s programme will be impracticable even if the democratic
revolution achieves the most complete victory. Speaking generally, the argument
that certain demands in the programme are “impracticable”, by which
we mean that they are not likely to be carried out in present conditions or in
the immediate future, cannot serve as an argument against those
demands. K. Kautsky brought this out very clearly in his article in reply to
Rosa Luxemburg on the question of the independence of
Poland.[1]
R. Luxemburg had said that the independence of Poland was
“impracticable”, to which K. Kautsky rejoined that it was
not a question of “practicability” in the sense mentioned
above, but whether a certain demand corresponds to the general trend
of development
of society, or to the general economic and political situation throughout the
civilised world. Take, for example, the demand in the programme of the German
Social-Democratic Party for the election of all government officials by the
people, said Kautsky. Of course, this demand is “impracticable” in
present conditions in Germany. Nevertheless, it is quite a correct and necessary
demand, for it is an inseparable part of the consistent democratic revolution
towards which all social development is tending and which the Social-Democrats
are demanding as a condition for socialism and as an essential element in the
political superstructure of socialism.

That is just why, in saying that Maslov’s programme is impracticable, we
emphasise the words: even if the democratic revolution were to achieve the most
complete victory. We do not merely say that Maslov’s programme is impracticable
in the light of present political relations and conditions. No, we assert that
it would be impracticable even after a complete and fully consistent democratic
revolution, i.e., in political conditions that would be most remote from the
present, and most favourable for fundamental agrarian reforms. Precisely in
these conditions Maslov’s programme would be impracticable, not because it would
be too big, so to speak, but because it would be too small for these
conditions. In other words: if the democratic revolution is not completely
victorious, then the abolition of landlordism, confiscation of the crown and
other lands, municipalisation, and so forth, will be entirely out of the
question. On the other hand, if the democratic revolution is completely
victorious, it cannot confine itself to municipalising part of the
land. A revolution that will sweep away all landlordism (and it is such a
revolution that Maslov and all those who stand for division or confiscation of
the landed estates assume) demands revolutionary energy and revolutionary action
en a scale unprecedented in history. To assume that such a revolution is
possible without confiscation of the landed estates (in his draft programme
Maslov only speaks of “alienation”, not of confiscation), without
the idea of nationalising all the land becoming widespread among the
“people”, and without the most politically advanced forms of
democracy being created, is to assume an
absurdity. All sides of social life are closely interconnected and, in the last
analysis, are entirely subordinate to relations of production. A radical
measure like the abolition of landlordism is unthinkable without a radical
change in the forms of the state (a change which, given this economic
reform, is possible only in the direction of democracy); it is unthinkable
unless the “people” and the peasantry who demand the abolition
of the most large-scale form of private property in land, are opposed to
private ownership of land in general. In other words: a far-reaching
revolution like the abolition of landlordism must, in itself, inevitably
give a mighty impetus to the whole of social, economic and political
development. A socialist who raises the question of such a revolution must
also of necessity carefully consider the new problems that arise from it:
he must examine this revolution in terms of the future as well as of the
past.

It is from this aspect that Comrade Maslov’s draft is particularly
unsatisfactory. First, it wrongly formulates the slogans that should now, at
once, immediately, kindle, fan, spread and “organise” the agrarian
revolution. The only slogans that can serve this purpose are
confiscation of all the landed estates and the establishment, for this
purpose, of none other than peasant committees, as the only advisable
form of local revolutionary authority that is close to the people and
powerful. Secondly, the draft is defective in that it does not specify the
political conditions without which “municipalisation” is a measure
that is not necessarily useful, and is, indeed, positively harmful for the
proletariat and the peasantry; that is to say, it does not give a precise and
unambiguous definition of the term “democratic state”. Thirdly, and
this is one of the most serious and least frequently noticed defects in the
draft, it does not examine the present agrarian revolution from the standpoint
of its future, does not indicate the tasks that directly follow from this
revolution, and suffers from a discrepancy between the economic and political
postulates upon which it is based.

Examine carefully the strongest argument (the third) which might support
Maslov’s draft. This argument reads: nationalisation will strengthen the
bourgeois state, whereas the municipal bodies, and local bodies generally, in
such a state are usually more democratic, are not burdened with expenditure
for the maintenance of the armed forces, do not directly fulfil the police
functions of oppressing the proletariat, and so on, and so forth. This argument
clearly assumes that the state will not be fully democratic; it assumes
that the most important part of the state, the central authority, will retain
most of the features of the old military and bureaucratic regime, and that the
local bodies, being of second-rate importance and subordinate, will be better,
more democratic, than the central bodies. In other words, this argument assumes
that the democratic revolution will not be a complete one. This
argument tacitly assumes something between Russia in the reign of
Alexander III, when the Zemstvos were better than the central bodies, and France
at the time of the “republic without republicans”, when the
reactionary bourgeoisie, frightened by the growing strength of the
proletariat, set up an anti-democratic “monarchist republic” with
central bodies that were far worse than the local ones, less democratic and more
permeated with the militarist, bureaucratic and police spirit. In
essence, Maslov’s draft tacitly assumes a situation in which the demands of our
political minimum programme have not been carried out in full, the sovereignty
of the people has not been ensured, the standing army has not been abolished,
officials are not elected, and so forth. In other words, it assumes that our
democratic revolution, like most of the democratic revolutions in Europe, has
not reached its complete fulfilment and that it has been curtailed, distorted,
“rolled back”, like all the others. Maslov’s draft is especially
intended for a half-way, inconsistent, incomplete, or curtailed democratic
revolution, “made innocuous” by
reaction.[2]

This is what makes Maslov’s draft absolutely artificial, mechanical,
impracticable in the above-mentioned sense of the word, inherently contradictory
and rickety, and lastly, lop-sided (for it only conceives of the transition from
the democratic revolution to anti-democratic bourgeois reaction, and not to the
intensified struggle of the proletariat for socialism).

It is absolutely impermissible tacitly to assume that the democratic
revolution will not be carried through to the
end, .and that
the fundamental
demands of our political minimum programme will not be carried out. Such
things must not be passed over in silence, but stated in very precise
terms. If Maslov wanted to do justice to himself, if he wanted to eliminate
any element of reticence and inherent falsity in his draft, he should have
said: as the state that will emerge from the present revolution will
“probably” not be very democratic, it will be better not to
increase its power by nationalisation, but to keep to Zemstvo-isation, for
“we must assume” that the Zemstvos will be better and
more democratic than the central bodies of the state. This, and this alone,
is the tacit assumption in Maslov’s draft. Therefore, when he uses the term
“democratic state” in his draft (Point 3), and without any
reservation at that, he is uttering a glaring untruth and misleading
himself, the proletariat and the whole people. For in reality he is
“adjusting” his draft precisely to a non-democratic state, a
reactionary state arising out of a democracy that has been left incomplete,
or has been “taken over” by reaction.

That being the case, it is clear why Maslov’s draft is so artificial and
“synthetic”. Indeed, if we assume a state with a central authority
that is more reactionary than the local authorities, a state like the third
French republic without republicans, then it is positively ridiculous to imagine
that landlordism can be abolished in such a state, or that it will at least be
possible to prevent the restoration of landlordism abolished by the
revolutionary onslaught. In that part of the world that is called Europe, and in
the century that is called the Twentieth, every state of that kind
would be compelled by the objective logic of the class struggle to start by
protecting landlordism, or by restoring it if it had been partly
abolished. The whole purpose, the objective purpose, of such a semi-democratic,
but actually reactionary, state is to preserve the foundations of
bourgeois, landlord and bureaucratic rule, and to sacrifice only the least
important of its prerogatives. The existence in such states of a reactionary central
authority side by side with comparatively “democratic” local
bodies, Zemstvos, municipal councils, and so forth, is due solely and
exclusively to the
fact that these local bodies are engaged in matters that are harmless for
the bourgeois state: they are engaged in “tinkering with
wash-basins”, water supply, electric trains, and similar matters that do
not endanger the foundations of what is called “the existing
social system”. It would be childishly naive to imagine that because the
Zemstvos engage in activities such as supplying water and light, they can engage
in the “activity” of abolishing landlordism. This is the same as if
a municipal council with a 100 per cent Social-Democratic majority somewhere in
the French Poshekhonye[3]
were to set about
“municipalising” all the privately-owned land in France that had
privately-owned buildings erected on it. The whole point is that the measure
which abolishes landlordism differs just a little from measures to improve
water supply, lighting, sewage, and so forth. The whole point is that the first
“measure” very daringly “encroaches” upon the
foundations of the whole “existing social system”, it
violently shakes and undermines these foundations, and facilitates the
proletariat’s onslaught upon the bourgeois system as a whole, on a scale
unprecedented in history. Yes, in such circumstances the first and
most important thing
any bourgeois state will have to concern itself with will be to preserve the
foundations of bourgeois domination. As soon as the fundamental interests of
the bourgeois and landlord state are encroached upon, all rights and privileges
as regards autonomous “tinkering with wash-basins” will be abolished
in the twinkling of an eye; all municipalisation will at once be scrapped, and
every vestige of democracy in local government bodies will be extirpated by
“punitive expeditions”. The innocent assumption that democratic
municipal autonomy is possible under a reactionary central authority, and that
this “autonomy” can be used to abolish landlordism, is a matchless
specimen of visual incongruities, or of infinite political naïveté.

Notes

[2]In his Agrarfrage Kautsky, to whom Maslov refers, points out
particularly that nationalisation, which would be absurd in the conditions
prevailing in Mecklenburg, would have a different significance in
democratic England or Australia.—Lenin

[3]Poshekhonye (derived from the name of a small town in tsarist
Russia)—a synonym for provincial “backwoods”, an
out-of-the-way corner with barbarous Patriarchal customs. The term became cur
rent after the appearance of Old Times in Poshekhonye, a story by the
Russian satirist M. Saltykov-Shchedrin.